


Nine Crimes

by xzombiexkittenx



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 10 Plagues, Crowley Has All the Genders (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Kids (Good Omens), Crowley's unending crisis of faith, Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Gen, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), aziraphale doubts but won't admit it, changing pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23783743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xzombiexkittenx/pseuds/xzombiexkittenx
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley during the plagues of Egypt.“Anyways,” Crawly says. “If you ask me, starting with the blood water seems a bit like…" She makes a rude gesture with her hand. "Shot the proverbial load early."Aziraphale grimaces. "Please," he says."It is though.""I suspect," Aziraphale says in the tones of someone who has no idea what he's talking about but is gamely making something up, "the first one ought to have done the trick. Once water is turned to blood, everyone sees the Almighty's power, and the Pharaoh lets the chosen people go. What kind of lunatic sees the Nile turned to blood and says, 'bring it on'?"
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 107





	Nine Crimes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "9 Crimes" by Damien Rice. The lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with this story at all, but I liked the title.
> 
> Footnotes in the end notes.

**Egypt, 1446 BC**

“Hello, Aziraphale,” Crawly says.

Aziraphale is a little surprised to see the demon. There’s been a lot of angelic activity in the area and that sort of thing usually means Crawly finds some excuse to be literally anywhere else.

The demon’s corporation is currently female. Like a snake, Aziraphale thinks, shedding its skin. Always the same snake, just a little different to look at. 

The current regional fashion for human females ranges from elaborate wigs, to natural hair braided or twisted depending on the texture. Crawly’s hair is long, and although red dye has become more popular in the last few years, nothing will ever be quite that shade. Her hair is curled in a way to make it look larger, like a fluffy red cloud, and there is gold woven in around the curls. She’s wearing a dress in the local style that will later be described as ‘a tits out kind of look,’ by people on the internet. But as it stands, the internet doesn’t exist yet and that sort of garment is not remarkable, nor are breasts considered especially exciting. 

Aziraphale hasn’t changed his corporation since he was given it. It’s ostensibly male, but Aziraphale is a little behind the times and hasn’t discovered Making an Effort yet. Does that make the corporation male or not? Some would argue yes, some no, but all those people would be wrong because it’s a fragile human simulacrum built to contain angelic essence, and is not inherently gendered in the first place, Effort or No Effort.

Crawly is sitting by the bank of the Nile on the steps of some local establishment, basking in the sun. The street is deserted, save for her and Aziraphale. And, of course, all the frogs.

“Crawly,” Aziraphale says. A frog lands on his foot and he gently shakes it off. He wants to ask why she’s still in town, considering who else has been on Earth, but he can’t think of a way to do it that doesn’t sound like giving the enemy his side’s battle plans.

She pats the stone next to her. “Don’t look so worried, Angel,” she says. “I’m not going to draw any attention. Downstairs heard your side was up to something and I got sent here to have a look. So, I’ll look, and then I’ll leave.”

Aziraphale smooths the back of his shendyt and sits next to her. “Well,” he says. “You know how it is. The Almighty has decided the Jewish people are going to leave Egypt, but since they’re slaves and can’t just up and go…A few miracles and I’m sure it will sort itself out.”

Crawly gives him a flat, unimpressed look. “I’m not sure I’d call turning the Nile to blood a miracle.”

The human definition of miracle does not include any requirement that the miracle be something good, or that it has a net positive effect, although many people think it does. 

The angelic definition of miracle is ‘something we did, therefore it must be Good.’ 

Crawly’s definition of miracle is ‘something the other side did, which they will say is Good but they’re a bunch of self-righteous twats, and even though their side is Right, that doesn’t necessarily make it Good.’

Crawly’s definition of good and evil has been like their approach to gender: fluid.

The lines between Good and Evil are one of many aspects of the Ineffable Plan Crawly will struggle with for the foreseeable future (and the Almighty can foresee all of the future). Before the Fall, many of the angels who would become demons asked a lot of questions. Crawly has noticed that those questions have all but stopped. Now that the demons have settled into their circumstances, the demons are keeping to the party line. Crawly isn’t sure when that happened, since they’ve been on Earth for most of Earth’s existence, but somehow they missed the memo.[1]

So Crawly is still full up with questions that they fear will never be answered. They mostly keep those questions to themself since no one is listening. Certainly no one is answering.

Aziraphale does not have questions, and that’s what he’s going to say if anyone wants to know. Not once, and certainly not in the company of a demon who keeps saying things like, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad one?”

“Anyways,” Crawly says. “If you ask me, starting with the blood water seems a bit like…" She makes a rude gesture with her hand. "Shot the proverbial load early."

Aziraphale grimaces. "Please," he says. 

"It is though."

"I suspect," Aziraphale says in the tones of someone who has no idea what he's talking about but is gamely making something up, "the first one ought to have done the trick. Once water is turned to blood, everyone sees the Almighty's power, and the Pharaoh lets the chosen people go. What kind of lunatic sees the Nile turned to blood and says, 'bring it on'?"

Crawly watches the frogs with great interest. "Haven't you been paying attention?" she asks. "Humans…" She leans back on her elbows and flaps a hand at the world around them. "One minute they're naked and afraid, next minute they're building pyramids, writing poetry. Writing, for that matter. Inventing zero! You should see what the Olmec are doing. They’ve got a whole city rigged up with plumbing.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Aziraphale says techily. He doesn't know what indoor plumbing is, and it won't make any difference in his life one way or the other when he finds out, but he will appreciate the ingenuity.

“Humans have not, never once, looked at something insurmountable, unconquerable, or fucking impossible, and said, ‘oh well, I guess we should just go home.’” Crawly is very fond of the absolute batshittery of humanity as a collective. “River turned to blood? They’ll figure out a way to turn it back, or they’ll find another water source.”

Aziraphale’s face pinches up. “What other water source?” he says. “There is no other water source!”

Crawly reaches out, fast as a whip crack, and grabs a frog the size of her fist. She turns her head from one side to the other, sizing it up, and then her jaw unhinges, just a little, so she can shove the whole thing in her mouth and swallow it.

Aziraphale sighs. "You really should cook them first. A little bit of butter, some garlic…"

Crawly makes a great show of licking her fingers. “They’ll find water, or they’ll invent some way to pull it out of the air. Just you watch.”

Aziraphale looks away. It's not worry, or shame. Angels don't feel worry or shame, the same way they don't ask questions. “Might want to skip the next one,” he says at last.

“Oh?”

“Lice,” Aziraphale says. “Or gnats. I don’t think the details have been hammered out yet.”

They sit together for a while longer, watching the Nile wend bloodily along. The hippos don’t seem overly bothered, horrible blood-sweating bastards that they are.

A frog plops into Aziraphale’s lap. He holds it in his hands and wonders what’s going to happen to them all. It can’t possibly be good for the local ecosystem.

* * *

Crawly took Aziraphale’s advice and didn’t hang around to see all the lice (the final decision was lice). She appears again after the lice and the flies have gone, just in time to watch as the livestock begins to die.

“Hello, Aziraphale,” she says.

The angel is standing near a pen of goats. Or, to be precise, a pen half-full of dying goats and half-full of little goat corpses.

“Hello,” Aziraphale replies glumly, turning to greet the demon.

Crawly doesn’t look so fashionable now. She’s wearing a simple linen dress, still incongruously black, and her hair is braided back out of her face. “Should have kept the frogs around,” she says. “At least then the poor fuckers would have something to eat.”

Aziraphale won’t meet her eyes.

“What did you do, Angel?” Crawly says.

“You can’t have so many of one animal in any particular area!” he says. “It upsets the food chain! And no one said the miracles were supposed to stack. One ends, another begins.”

Crawly has a bemused expression on her face.[2]

She knows angels. She was one, after all. And none of them have ever been quite like Aziraphale. An angel who will stand by and watch all sorts of horrible things done in the name of God, but worries about the local flora and fauna. She’d thought it was odd when the Nile went back to being water, and the frogs and lice and flies all vanished overnight. Aziraphale having a fit of...emotion over it makes sense though. He’s a mess of contradictions, anxiety and surety, faith and doubt, good and bastard.

“I really thought it would be over by now,” Aziraphale says fretfully. “This is dragging on so.”

Crawly feels immense pity for the angel before she squashes that feeling like the locals were squashing frogs. "The rumour Downstairs is that your side put the Pharaoh up to it."

Aziraphale's eyes go wide. "Whatever can you mean?"

"Didn't you hear? Apparently, your side 'hardened his heart.' Poor bugger might have let everyone go, but no chance of that now."

"That's not very sporting," Aziraphale says. "Why would…" He stops with a gulp. "I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for it."

"Whatever the reason," Crawly says, although she makes it sound like 'whatever the nasty, unfair, fucked up reason,' "it just proves my point. If you know you're going to get to do your whole plagues bit, starting with blood water and then following that up with frogs is back-asswards."

Aziraphale wrings his hands. “How many do you think there will be?”

Crawly considers this. “Nine,” she says. “Three, and three, and three. That sounds like the sort of thing your lot would do.” She claps him on the shoulder. “Chin up, Angel, you’re past the halfway point.”

“Boils are next,” Aziraphale says, wretchedly.

Crawly’s mouth flattens out into a disapproving line. “If you see your little miracle workers, tell them from me that they’re worse than my lot.”

Aziraphale will do nothing of the kind, and they both know it.

* * *

Aziraphale doesn’t see Crawly for a while, not until the ninth plague. The sun has been dark for three days. People are saying it’s the end of the world. It isn’t, but good luck convincing them of that.

He’s standing at the foot of a temple, high up, with a great vantage point of the city, when Crawly appears out of the shadows exactly like what she is. “I would think you’d look happier,” she says. “A few more days, the emancipation of the slaves, and it’s all back to normal. Sun shines, world turns, Jewish people go...wherever it is they’re going.” 

It’s too dark to navigate with human eyes. Her tongue flicks out, tasting the air. She’d be embarrassed about that, but Aziraphale doesn’t even notice. His face is a perfect study in misery. Crawly feels a cold, creeping sensation come over her corporation. It is the feeling of someone walking over your grave, even though Crawly will never have a grave because she is not a person, and her body is not a real body.

“Angel,” she says.

“There’s going to be one more,” he says, without inflection. “Ten in all.”

Crawly has to swallow twice before she can say, “What are they going to do?”

He won’t look at her, eyes turned down. He’s not the sort to ask for guidance in a moment like this. He’s not supposed to need it. He doesn’t need it. God must know. 

“All the firstborn sons,” Aziraphale says, so quietly Crawly can barely hear him. “They’re…”

“Not more boils,” Crawly says, almost hopefully.

Aziraphale turns his head her way, but he’s still looking at the earth under their feet. “They’re all going to be killed.”

Crawly grabs onto Aziraphale’s shoulders and shakes him. “We just watched that,” she snarls. “With the ark, and Job’s kids, and burning Sodom to the ground with holy fire. How many children are your side going to murder? How is this the Great Plan?”

Aziraphale finally meets Crawly’s eyes. They’re solid yellow, not a sliver of white around them. Her hands and feet are scaled. She’s barely holding her corporation in human form. He hasn’t seen her so distressed...ever. But it’s been building up, he thinks. They’ve been watching Earth for two-and-a-half thousand years and Crawly has been gathering up her resentment, like every little thing is a personal affront; like everything that happens to the humans is another weight on some cosmic scale that’s tipping in a direction she doesn’t approve of.

“I don’t hear from Her directly,” Aziraphale says. “You know that. We have our orders.”

“And your _orders_ are to kill innocent children?” Crawly wants to hit him. She wants to push him down the steps of the temple. She wants to curse him with boils, and starvation, and fear, and pain and pain and pain and _hopelessness_ until he understands. He doesn’t understand any of it.

Crawly steps back. She wishes she was disappointed, but she’s not. She questions, Aziraphale doesn’t. He can’t. He won’t.

“You should go,” Aziraphale says. He turns away, standing straight, like the sentry he failed at being. “They’ll be sending the Destroyer soon.”

Crawly hisses at him, a wordless invective, and melts back into the shadows. It’s a cool exit. Very demony. 

She spoils it a minute later by hiking up the skirt of her dress and running like...well...not like Hell. Hell doesn’t run. Hell is a slow-walking villain waiting for you to fall before appearing directly behind you, even though there’s not a chance they could have kept up.

But Crawly runs. She’s got long legs and a can-do attitude, and she’s got places to be.

* * *

The thing to remember about Crawly is that they’re a demon, but that they’re only a demon _now_. First, Crawly was an angel that took a million light-year dive into a pit of flame and slithered out in the form of a snake. Crawly has been an angel, a demon, a snake, a man, a woman, a being trying out genders long forgotten by modern society.

Mostly, Crawly has been a witness.

It’s been a minute since Crawly was a snake. She doesn't like to lean into it. Just look at Beezelbub. No good ever came of embracing that sort of thing. Crawly didn’t want to remember being that way, a twisting, coiling, tube of muscle, so unlike being an angel.

Crawly remembers being cast out. The pain, and fear, and the silence. The horrifying silence.

Getting “killed” on Earth usually means a quick trip back Downstairs. Annoying, but not permanent. Crawly doesn’t want to know what would happen if an angel struck a demon down. What does death look like to a demon? Where do they go? They don’t have souls. Who takes them away from this plane of existence? Is there another?

There are so many questions, and never enough time to ask them all. Not that anyone’s answering anyway. [3]

It doesn’t matter. The Destroyer is coming. Crawly can’t fight the Destroyer any more than she could stop the rain from flooding the desert. But she can do little demonic miracles. She can...she can try.

Crawly stands in the empty street and pushes her skinny fingers through her hair. She does enjoy having hair. And fingers.

She hopes this isn’t going to bite her in the ass later. She hopes she has one later. An ass, that is.

Crawly lets the memory of a different corporeal form roll through her. No more arms, no more legs, no more neck. No more eyebrows, or toenails, or opposable thumbs. Just a jaw that unhinges and a body big enough to be deeply terrifying. Because snakes, in today’s modern world, don’t get very big. Oh, there’s the reticulated python—a thirty-foot constrictor—or the giant anaconda which [4] weighs in at over 500lbs, but there have been bigger ones. There once was a snake that weighed 2500lbs and was longer than a school bus, [5] and Crawly remembers it.

The snake Crawly moves fast for its size. It pushes its head through doors and into homes and finds little boys, skin raw and itchy, hungry and thirsty, crying for their mothers. Crawly unhinges its jaw and swallows them whole. One, two, another, another.

How is a demon to know that a snake would drown what it swallows in lubricating saliva before that thing was halfway down its throat? How could a demon know about the acidity in the stomach of a snake? Demons don’t have to eat. Crawly is partial to frogs, but doesn’t need food. It doesn’t understand that there are limits to a physical form, since no one ever mentioned those to Crawly.

Another child, and another, down the throat of a serpent the size of a vehicle that has yet to be invented.

Crawly does not have enough time to swallow seventy-four children, but by Go-, by Sata-, by _someone_ it tries.

Darkness, real darkness, is falling. 

Crawly can hear wings. Not hear, exactly. Snakes don’t have especially good hearing. Either way, it knows that it’s time to get the fuck out of there before it finds out what happens to demons when they are smote...Smited...Killed by the angel of death.

* * *

The Destroyer comes to Egypt and a shadow darker than night stretches out over the land.

Standing at the foot of a temple that overlooks the city, an angel watches. It doesn’t weep. It is faithful. It is loyal. 

It doesn’t have to watch, but it refuses to turn its faces, and its wheels and wheels of eyes, away from what comes next. If it is going to defend the Ineffable Plan to a demon, then it’s going to have to have the courage to watch. It saw the frogs, and the blood, and the animal dying, and the boils. It can stand by as this happens, too. Even if it hurts.

The angel is busy watching the city so it doesn’t see the snake swimming for its life across the Nile to the side where the jackals hold domain, and the only human inhabitants are the dead. The angel doesn’t see the snake bury itself deep in the sand, where it stays very, very still. 

Both the demon and the angel wait.

The angel does not think of God. It doesn’t think of anything. 

What the angel is feeling is like the moment just before Nothing became Something; the second after you hurt yourself very badly, before you feel the pain; the endless pause when someone in a uniform knocks on your door and says, “there’s been an accident.” 

The angel waits, because it doesn’t know what else to do.

On the other hand, the demon is not in some moment suspended in time. It is very much In The Shit, and actively hiding. The demon is currently experiencing something very like pants-wetting terror, except the demon is not wearing pants.[6]

Later, there will be a saying: No one is an atheist in a foxhole. The saying will be wrong. There are plenty of atheists in any given war, and plenty of foxholes have created atheists. You might think this future saying, though inaccurate, would apply to the demon Crawly as it waits to see if it will be discovered. You would be wrong.

Crawly is not an atheist. It can't be, since it has spoken to God and knows the silence where once there was comfort. 

Where you would be right, is that Crawly, in extremis, still talks to the Almighty.

Buried under the sand, Crawly doesn't speak aloud, but it cries out nevertheless.

How could you? How is this Good? How could you do this to them again? Please let me help them. Please don't take them. Fuck you, and fuck your Ineffable Plan. How could you forsake them? Please, I didn't mean it. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, let me keep them safe. They're so few. They're only children.

* * *

The Destroyer passes over the lands of Egypt and is gone again.

Aziraphale sits down heavily on the steps of the temple as the sun finally peeks over the horizon for the first time in three days. He feels...tired. He thinks that might be what he’s feeling. Or maybe it’s anger. He can’t tell. He’s still putting names to his emotions. Anxiety was pretty much the first one he figured out, but the others are still muddled. Yes, he thinks it might be weariness. That’s more forgivable than anger.

Crawly emerges from the sand and swims back to the land of the living. Already the snake can feel the vibrations from the wailing of women. It writhes a little, and then, with some effort, regurgitates the first of the sons it held in its belly.

One, two, another, another. One by one they roll out onto the street, and huddle together, deeply confused, until there are forty-one children. Not quite a school bus’ worth. Not enough, Crawly thinks, but more than none.

When they are all out, Crawly focuses. It remembers arms, and legs, and opposable thumbs. After a strange contortion, a shrinking and changing, there is a woman where once there was a snake. Her hair is the red of a river turned to blood, and her eyes are the colour of sickness, but her hands are gentle as she fashions her garments into a sling to hold one infant to her back, another to her front. 

She lines up the boys, oldest then youngest, then next oldest and next youngest, and so on. She takes the last infant in one arm, her other hand held tightly by a boy of only three summers.

"One more push, lads," Crawly says. "I know you're scared. It's okay to cry. But your mamas are worried about you, and I'm going to take you home. Hold onto each other. Good boys, almost there, just a little longer."

The children hold each other's hands, forming a long, serpentine line, except for the one who clings to Crawly's hand and will not be moved.

House by house the demon Crawly returns the first born sons of Egypt to their mothers. 

Those old enough to have any understanding of what happened will say they were swallowed by Wadjet, the Cobra goddess, protector of Egypt. For many reasons the Cobra will adorn crowns, and quills, and eventually a staff to symbolize healing and knowledge. 

First, they will say, do no harm.

Crawly would laugh at that. She has done plenty of harm. She has tempted, and corrupted, and she will glue pound coins to the London sidewalk. She will design the M25. 

It is fitting, she thinks, that the snake symbolize knowledge. Look at what knowledge set in motion. Look at what asking ‘why’ does.

Look at what she did first. 

* * *

"Hello, Aziraphale," Crawly says, joining Aziraphale on the crest of a sand dune. "How're the chosen ones getting on?"

Aziraphale sighs. "This desert is only the size of New Jersey.[6] I don't understand how they haven't figured their way out!"

Crawly ponders this. "What's New Jersey?"

Aziraphale isn’t sure. But he is sure that no one should be lost when they could just follow the path of the sun. It feels like someone is Up To Something Ineffable.

Crawly watches the line of people trudging through the valley of the shadow of death, carrying their children, their elders, and any others who cannot walk. This doesn’t seem like deliverance.

She makes a rude sound. “Right,” she says. “I’m going to see how the Olmec are getting on with that plumbing. Or maybe drop by Australia and see if anyone’s figured out what’s going on with marsupials. The locals don’t seem to mind, but I’m not convinced kangaroos should be allowed to...do that.”

They don’t see one another very often, but Aziraphale misses her when she’s gone. He’s certain that he shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. They’ll go their separate ways, and no one needs to know about any of it. It’s a big Earth. There’s plenty of room for them both.

“Crawly,” he says. Aziraphale wants to tell Crawly that humanity will get it together, that the Almighty will let them be. He can’t.

“If you hear from Her…” Crawly thinks of the children she sheltered in her belly. It was nothing, what she did. A drop in the bucket. Worse has happened, worse will happen.

Crawly touches the angel’s face; gentle, pitying, on the cusp of bitterness. She kisses the angel because kisses are still allowed. Later, it will say too much, but for now the demon can kiss the angel as brothers do. [7]

“Tell Her, She’s not forgiven,” Crawly says and walks into the desert.

**Author's Note:**

> Footnotes:
> 
> [1] There was a memo, actually. It was, like most corporate memos, lacking in useful content, but the gist of it was ‘Stop asking questions. Beezelbub is in charge. We’re demons now. Time to be bad.’
> 
> [2] This is because she is bemused. 
> 
> [3] Death could answer most of these questions. But Death won’t answer any more than the Almighty will. The Almighty moves in mysterious ways. Death just enjoys watching demons and angels go through it. Functionally immortal beings annoy Death because they’re smug without reason. One day Death will reap them. And Death will look at them and will not say, “I told you so,” because Death doesn’t have to have the last word. Death is the last word.
> 
> [4] Don’t want none…
> 
> [5] For those of you who are not familiar with the North American school bus, it is a hideous death trap without seatbelts, shock absorbers, or means to prevent pre-teens from doing things of dubious sense to one another. It can hold, on average, seventy-four children.
> 
> [5] Not European pants, nor North American ones.
> 
> [6] Yeah...the desert Moses got lost in is the size of New Jersey. Just follow the arc of the sun, my guy. It’s not that far, end to end.
> 
> [7] The demon does not mean it as brothers do.


End file.
